Thursday, September 1, 2016

Keynes Was a Crackpot

By Gary North

John Maynard Keynes was a crackpot. So are his followers. All of them.

I can hear the shocked response. “But, Dr. North, you’re not supposed to say such things. It’s not polite. It shows a lack of etiquette. People who say such things are themselves dismissed as crackpots.” To which I respond: “Dismissed by whom?”

You are about to enter into Keynes’ verbally garbled world. It was a mental world of sheer crackpottery. It was the world in which free lunches provided by the state were promised to be only one generation away. This passage appears on pages 220-21.

He means that small holders of money (individuals) can protect themselves by withdrawing and holding a certain amount of cash but larger holders (the rich, corporations, investing institutions) cannot do so because it's simply impractical. Large holders of dollars have no choice but to hold them electronically in an appoved institution, where they can be gradually sheared away through negative interest rates.